Preface

1. PROLOGUE. One might say of me, aptly enough and in mockery, that for me the by-work is greater than the work itself. For in truth I ought long ago, having let go of public affairs and withdrawn from their turmoil, having departed from the midst of the world and chosen to live by myself, and having sentenced myself to a perpetual exile—since He who is above us has so arranged our circumstances, when He broke the bonds that held me and deprived me of those most dear, by reasons known to Himself, painful indeed to me but in every way for my benefit—I ought, I say, to have pursued nothing else but those things that set the soul in order and cleanse it of the defilements that have sunk into it through the baseness of its deeds, the things by which the Divine is reconciled, against whom I have provoked anger by transgressing His commandments and ordinances, and to have sought in this way pardon for my faults. Yet I, disposed toward the work negligently out of my sluggishness toward what is good, have strained my zeal upon the by-work instead.

But, that I may also say something in my own defense, it was not of my own impulse that I set out upon the undertaking; rather, friends spurred me to it, seeing me at leisure and saying, "Use your leisure for a work of common benefit, and from this too a recompense shall be laid up for you with God." For they pressed upon me the example of those who labored over histories and recorded events of long ago. Some of these wrote out at greater length the various deeds of the men of old and their stratagems, narrating battle-lines and the clashes of armies, encampments and palisades and whatever follows upon these; and besides this, descriptions of regions and the difficult passages of roads, steep and impassable mountains, the narrows of ravines, the strength of cities, and the lofty—one might almost say ethereal—heights of towers. Others composed their writings for display, showing off what power they had in writing, and for this reason inserting public speeches and using language in a more digressive or more rhetorical manner. In some, ambition ended even in dialogues, so that whenever they wrote against certain men who held false opinions and erred concerning correct doctrines, they would compose discourses against them as though they were present, and refute their wrong belief, drawing their proofs from Holy Scripture; or again they would argue against the Jews and show them to be willfully obstinate in not receiving our mystery, and would make use of prophetic testimonies; and again they would set themselves against the Greeks, bringing their nonsense into the open, mocking the myths they tell, and producing their own writings as a refutation of their false belief; and in some places they would offer maxims and moral reflection. "But these things," they said, "the greater part of those who read the writings of those histories—not to say all—consider burdensome and superfluous, both because they require more leisure, and because, even if some who take up the histories should obtain that leisure, their labor over them turns out to be in vain, since the long narratives about battle-lines and wars and the array of armies and the rest of such matters slip from the memory, while the public speeches and discourses come to nothing useful for those who take up the history. For what profit," they said, "will anyone have from knowing what this popular leader said to the people, what this general said to his soldiers, or what that emperor said to the envoys from the Persians, or another to those from the Celts or Scythians, or to those from Egypt perhaps, or to those from the Dacians and Triballians, or what someone else said in addressing the Senate or the common multitude?" They said, then, that some had published their historical writings of this kind—expanded, that is, and inclining toward the more ambitious manner—while others had set themselves to the writing of histories in the opposite way, using such brevity that they thereby did harm in the essential matters to those who had labored over their own works, since they passed over the very weightiest of the deeds of the men whose history they told—some of whom even deserved to be celebrated—and said only the briefest things about them, things that revealed neither their character nor their nature and purpose, nor how each of the kings came to hold his kingship, nor who reigned before him, nor from whom he was descended. They added, too, that some of these writings had been published in a style far too plain, and were set forth in vulgar or sometimes even barbarous expressions, and composed with too many solecisms, so that those acquainted with eloquence found them distasteful. Saying such things, and faulting the historical writings in the way described, they often urged me to take the books in hand, and—passing over the greater part of them, of which some, owing to their bulk, are by nature unfit to settle in the memory, while others end in nothing profitable—to cut down the expanded narrative and publish a concise history, teaching in a summary fashion those who take up the work the more essential of the things done, or otherwise come to pass, by those of whom the writing treats.

These men, then, urged me to gird myself for such a labor and to lay hold of such a work;

2. but I, being relaxed in my disposition—for the truth shall be told—and living at my ease, and also seeing that the matter required leisure free from other concerns and many books, hesitated and shrank back from the undertaking. Yet those who prodded me did not let up, and at last, by the persistence of their proddings, they roused me to the work. For if the steady dripping of a drop can hollow out the hardness and obduracy of a rock, much more can a steady word, knocking at the ears, rouse the ease of a relaxed disposition and a slackened purpose. Then, too, it came into my mind that the labor and the occupation of writing would not be without gain even for the benefit of the soul. For upon a mind at rest the breath of wickedness is more apt to blow, stirring up surges now of base notions and now of shifting thoughts, and to overwhelm it by the continual succession of assaults, and either to make it slip toward sin—if not in deeds, then at least in consents—or, for the time being, to swell up against it a great storm and turmoil. But if the mind is occupied with something, it for the most part escapes the towering waves that come from the multitude of thoughts and from wicked notions. So then, both because of the spurring on from my friends and for the warding off of foul or vain thoughts, I applied myself to the task.

In this way, then, it came about that I set my hand to the present work. But if I do not make the account of each of the things recorded a precise one, I ask those who come upon it to grant me pardon. For perhaps I shall not have at hand as many books as are needful to me for the work, since I am now passing my time in this remote place; nor have all the writers of histories recorded the same things about the same matters, but they disagree in many points, if not indeed in most. And if I should wish to be precise about each of the things related, and to set out what this writer says about this matter and what another says about the same, I too would make my treatment of each thing run to many lines. For these reasons I have resolved to pass over the points on which those who wrote about the same matters contradict one another, unless some matter be of the very greatest importance and such that, if it were left out, it would do harm to the essential parts of the writing. And if the character of the style varies and is not throughout consistent with itself, let no one wonder, nor blame the work or me, its father. For having gathered the histories from many books, in many places I shall use the compositions and expressions of those writers, while in whatever places I myself paraphrase or recast, I shall adapt the form of my own style to their character, so that the writing may not seem out of tune with itself.

3. But before the history let it be said, in a more summary way, what the things to be related are, so that those who come upon the work may know that they will gain knowledge of many histories, and those the most necessary. This epitome comprises, then, the Octateuch and all that is recorded in it; the books of Kingdoms are included along with it, and besides these the Chronicles, and whatever the Hebrew Josephus said in his antiquarian work beyond the older writers, or whatever he related in a more digressive way or otherwise differently from them; and the matters concerning Ezra, and the captivities of the Hebrews—the earlier one, that of the ten tribes, which came about through the Assyrian Shalmaneser, who took Samaria by siege, led the nation captive, brought it across the Euphrates and settled it there, and removed into Samaria certain nations who were called Cuthaeans—then the captivity brought upon Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar, and how the city became desolate and the temple was burned and the whole nation was enslaved, and how, after seventy years, according to the predictions of the prophets, it was granted to the people by Cyrus, who had overthrown the kingdom of the Assyrians, to return to Jerusalem, to raise up the city and to restore the temple; and who Cyrus was, and how he overthrew the kingdom of the Assyrians, and who reigned after him; and how, and by whom, the building of the city was hindered, and by whom in turn its raising up was permitted; and concerning the prophet Daniel, and how he interpreted the dreams of Nebuchadnezzar and the vision of Belshazzar, when that barbarian saw the joint of a hand writing upon the wall, and concerning certain of the prophet's visions, all of which are recorded with a concise interpretation; and concerning the three youths and the extraordinary things done by God to them or through them; and concerning Esther, and how she delivered the race of the Hebrews from utter destruction; and concerning Judith, who by her cunning slew Holofernes and gave over his army to ruin; and concerning Tobit, and how, smitten with blindness and driven from prosperity into bitter poverty, he again, on account of his good deeds, by the providence of God obtained the power to see and came to have abundance of wealth. But the affairs of Alexander the Macedonian are also abridged here, the history being obliged to make mention of him as well, both for other reasons and because, after Darius's first defeat at Issus, he came to Jerusalem and honored the high priest exceedingly, and how he overthrew the kingdom of the Persians and made it subject to himself, and how long he reigned, and how, when he died, his kingdom was divided into four governments; and all that came upon the Jews from Antiochus Epiphanes, who happened to be a descendant of one of Alexander's successors; and how the Hasmoneans resisted him and rescued their countrymen from his tyranny, and who these men were, and how, and for how long, they presided over their own people; and how, after the return to Jerusalem from the captivity under the Assyrians, the nation of the Jews was not ruled by a king but governed by the high priests, and how the descendants of the aforesaid Hasmoneans, while invested with the high-priestly office and directing the affairs of the nation, also set a diadem upon themselves; and how, when the brothers Hyrcanus and Aristobulus were at variance over the kingdom of Judaea, Pompey the Great, then commanding the Romans, having been summoned to arbitrate between the kinsmen, took the city of Jerusalem and subjected the nation to the Romans; and how Herod, the son of Antipater, afterward came to hold the kingdom of the Jews, and who this man was and from where he was descended, and all that befell him in his household, and for how long those descended from him held the kingdom; and in what manner and from what time governors were sent from Rome to Judaea; and all that Josephus wrote concerning our Savior Jesus Christ, and indeed concerning John the Baptist also; and for what reasons the Jews revolted from submission to the Romans, and how their nation was warred upon by the Romans, and by whom and how Jerusalem was sacked—that last sacking from which it found no recall.

4. Since, then, the history makes mention of the Romans and of Rome, it seemed necessary to me to write about these matters as well, and to hand down from where and from whom the nation of the Romans took its beginning, and by whom the land of Italy was inhabited in former times; whence Romulus was brought into the light, who became the founder of Rome, and how Remus his brother was slain, and how he himself afterward vanished from sight; and how this city was first ruled by kings, and what customs and laws it observed; and how Tarquin the Proud, having turned the kingship into a tyranny, was deposed, and how many and what kind of wars Rome bore on account of his overthrow; and how the Roman state was changed into an aristocracy, and then into a democracy, with consuls and dictators, and afterward tribunes, conducting the administration of public affairs; and what the consulship was in old times, what the dictatorship was, what the work of the censors was, and what term was fixed for each of these offices; and what manner of thing the triumph was among them, and whence this name was derived; and all that came to pass in the times of the consulships, even if not everything, for want of the books that relate these things; and how afterward, out of these, the rule passed over to monarchy among the Romans; and how Gaius Julius Caesar first laid claim to this, though not in a pure form, and then, when he had been slain upon the rostra by those who clung to liberty, how Augustus Octavius Caesar, being the nephew of the slain Caesar and adopted by him, pursued the murderers of his adoptive father—having Antony as his partner in the work, but afterward falling out with him as well, and conquering him in a sea battle near Actium, and then, when he had fled with Cleopatra to Alexandria, overtaking him and reducing the man to such straits that he laid hands upon himself; and how great a destruction of the Romans there was in these civil wars—first when Octavius and Antony were set against Brutus and Cassius and the other slayers of Caesar, and then when they fought against one another; and how Cleopatra, the queen of Egypt, a descendant of the Ptolemies, was taken alive, and how she too made an end of herself, as was conjectured, by the bite of an asp; and how Octavius, having thus returned to Rome with splendid triumphs, laid claim to sole rule and transferred the dominion of the Romans into a strict monarchy; and who reigned after him as monarchs, and how each came to the rule, and how and for how long he ruled, and with what end of life he met; and who, under these emperors, after the venerable apostles, adorned the thrones of the four great churches—I mean those of Rome and Alexandria and Antioch and Jerusalem—and how many of them were deemed worthy of a martyr's end; and how Diocletian and Maximian Herculius raged against the Christians more than the others, and how, having laid down the rule, they appointed others as Caesars in their place, one of whom was Constantius Chlorus, the father of Constantine the Great, the government of the Gauls and of Britain having been allotted to him; and how, as he was dying, he made his firstborn son—this very Constantine, the equal of the apostles—the successor to his own rule; and how this man became sole ruler, having overcome the rest, when the sign of the cross appeared to him through stars in the heaven; and how he came over to Christ and extended the faith, granting freedom to its preaching, and how in Byzantium he built a city named after himself, calling it New Rome, and transferred the empire from elder Rome to this city; and who reigned in it after him, and what each was in his character, and indeed in his piety, and how long he held the rule and how he departed this life; and who presided over the church in Constantinople, and for how long each, and which of them held to the correct doctrine, and which became heterodox, and how each of them departed from here; and under what emperors and patriarchs, and against whom, the councils were convened. And thus the account, descending as far as the emperors of our own time, brings the writing to its end, having made mention along the way of many other histories, including obscure ones. But I must make the beginning of this writing the first beginning, the cause of all things, the one without beginning and without time, and must speak of the bringing-forth and the coming-to-be of the things produced by that cause out of non-being into existence and substance.